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METAPHYSICS 



BY 



FREDERICK J. E. WOODBRIDGE 

JOHNSONIAN PROFESSOR OF PHILOSOPHY 
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 



]^ew York 

THE COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS 
1908 



METAPHYSICS 



A LECTURE DELIVERED AT COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 

IN THE SERIES ON SCIENCE, PHILOSOPHY AND ART 

MARCH 18, 1908 




METAPHYSICS 



BY 



FREDERICK J. E. WOODBRIDGE 

JOHNSONIAN PROFESSOR OF PHILOSOPHY 
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 



]Nfew York 

THE COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS 
1908 






LIBRARY of G0N8KESS 

i wo Copies Receive 

APR 27 1908' 

SUSS A XXc. Nu, 
COPY 8. 




Copyright, 1908, 
By THE COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS. 



Set up, and published April, 1908. 



METAPHYSICS 



The first book to bear the title "Metaphysics" is attributed 
to Aristotle. If the title described or suggested the con- 
tents of the book, there might have been less confusion re- 
garding the nature of the science. To some, however, it 
means the mysterious, to others, the exceptionally pro- 
found; while still others see in it an occasion for mirth. 
There have been, consequently, many definitions of meta- 
physics. The Century Dictionary gives, among others, the 
following: "The doctrine of first principles"; "Super- 
natural science; the doctrine of that which transcends all 
human experience"; "The science of the mind treated by 
means of introspection and analysis, and not by experiment 
and scientific observation"; "Any doctrine based upon pre- 
sumption and not upon inductive reasoning and observa- 
tion"; "An abstract and abstruse body of doctrine sup- 
posed to be virtually taken for granted in some science"; 
"Used frequently with the definite article, and generally 
connected with unpleasant associations, as being a study 
very dry and at the same time of doubtful truth." To 
these definitions might be added that by Professor James : 
"An unusually obstinate attempt to think clearly and con- 
sistently." 

Such variety of definition is largely due to the fact that 
the title given to Aristotle's book was an unfortunate 
choice. It appears to indicate that when you have finished 
your physics, the science which was originally thought to 
embrace nature, you must then pass beyond physics and 

5 



somehow cut loose from nature herself. After physics, 
metaphysics; after nature, the supernatural— that is an 
invitation at once to titanic effort and to Icarian folly. 
Metaphysics came to suggest such human possibilities. 
Originally, however, the term represented no more than 
the happy thought of an enterprising editor. For, we are 
told, Andronicus of Rhodes, in the first century B. C, 
finding among the works of Aristotle a number of loosely 
connected writings which the great Greek had neglected 
to name, placed these writings after the books on physics, 
and named them accordingly, tcl pera tol ^vo-itcd, the books 
which come after the books on physics. A name which 
thus indicated only an editorial arrangement became the 
name of a department of knowledge. That is not the only 
time when an editor's happy thought has been the cause of 
mischief. 

If, however, we turn from the inspiring title to the writ- 
ings themselves, illusions about the supernatural character 
of metaphysics tend to disappear. "There is," so we are 
told by the Stagirite, "a science which investigates exist- 
ence as existence and whatever belongs to existence as 
such. It is identical with none of the sciences which 
are defined less generally. For none of these professedly 
considers existence as existence, but each, restricting itself 
to some aspect of it, investigates the general aspect only 
incidentally, as do the mathematical sciences." The em- 
phasis is thus put by Aristotle on fact and on nature, but 
it is put on fact and nature as we attempt to view them 
with at once the least and with the greatest restriction: 
with the least restriction, because we are invited to view 
nature in the light of her most comprehensive characters; 
with the greatest restriction, because we are invited to 
view her stripped of her wonderful diversity. 

In thus conceiving a science whose distinguishing mark 
should be that it applies to all existence, Aristotle noted a 

6 



fact which the history of intellectual progress has abun- 
dantly illustrated, the fact, namely, that knowledge grows 
in extent and richness only through specialization. Nature 
herself is a specialized matter. She does things by pro- 
ducing differences, individuals, variations. To grasp this 
variety, a variety of sciences is necessary. Indeed, as 
Aristotle estimates the achievements of his predecessors, 
he finds the source of their confusion, inadequacy, and limi- 
tation to lie in their habit of regarding each his own special 
science as a sufficient account of the cosmos. What they 
said may have been true under the restrictions which their 
limited field imposed upon their utterance; but it became 
false when it was transferred to other fields differently 
limited. Following his own illustrations we may say, for 
instance, that the Pythagoreans were quite right in trying 
to formulate the undoubted numerical relations which ob- 
tain in nature ; but they were quite wrong if they conceived 
arithmetic to be an adequate astronomy. The soul may be 
a harmony of the body and thus capable of numerical ex- 
pression, but to think one has exhausted its nature by de- 
fining it as a moving number is to forget the natural limi- 
tations of inquiry and to make a rhetorical phrase the 
substitute for scientific insight. We may properly speak 
of a sick soul as out of tune, but we should not thereby 
become either psychologists or physicians. No ; knowledge 
is a matter of special sciences, each growing sanely as it 
clearly recognizes the particular and specialized aspect of 
nature with which it deals, but becoming confused when 
it forgets that it is one of many. Accordingly what we 
call the philosophy of Aristotle is not a single science to be 
described by a picturesque or a provoking name, but a 
system of sciences the members of which should be related 
to one another in the way nature rather than desire permits. 
If knowledge increases thus through limitation, restric- 
tion, and specialization, if science grows through the mul- 

7 



tiplication of different sciences, must our final view of 
nature reveal her as a parceled and disjointed thing? Is 
the desire to say something about the universe as a whole 
which may none the less be true of it, is that desire without 
warrant, something utterly to be condemned? Not, 
thought Aristotle, if that desire is checked and controlled 
by fact. We should indeed err if we thought to attain 
unity through any artificial combination of special truths, 
or by attempting so to reduce the diversity of the sciences 
that their individual differences should disappear. Yet we 
may approach unity through the same method by which 
the special sciences gain their individual coherence and 
stability, that is, by limitation and restriction of field. All 
things somehow exist; and because they so obviously do, 
we can never lose sight of the fact that existence itself is a 
problem irrespective of the fact whether a particular ex- 
istence is that of a stone, a man, or a god. Particular 
existences may carry us at last to some exclusive and in- 
alienable core of individuality, hidden somewhere and pos- 
sibly discoverable, but existence itself is possessed by 
nothing exclusively. It is rather the common feature of 
everything that can be investigated, and as such is some- 
thing to be looked into. Whether such looking is fruitful 
is a question not to be prejudiced. The fruitfulness of the 
inquiry depends upon the discovery whether existence as 
such has anything to reveal. We thus return to Aristotle's 
conception of a science of existence as existence, a special- 
ized and restricted science, doing its own work and not that 
of the mathematician or the physicist or the biologist, or 
of any other investigator, a science which should take its 
place in that system of sciences the aim of which is to reveal 
to us with growing clearness the world in which we live. 
It was that science which Andronicus of Rhodes called 
"Metaphysics," baptizing it in the name of ambiguity, con- 
fusion, and idiosyncrasy. 

8 



For me it would be a congenial task to devote the re- 
mainder of this lecture to a detailed exposition of the 
metaphysics of Aristotle. It would be the more congenial, 
since the lecturer on history, by making the ancients our 
contemporaries, has saved enthusiasm for the Stagirite 
from being condemned as a mere anachronism. To call 
Aristotle, as Dante is supposed to have done, the master 
of them that know, even if they know no less than others, 
is still a privilege in the twentieth century. And this 
privilege is the one ad hominem argument in justification 
of the study of metaphysics which I would venture to sug- 
gest to an audience already made somewhat familiar with 
the inadequacies and limitations of human knowledge. As 
the congenial, however, may not be the appropriate, I pro- 
ceed to sketch the general bearings of metaphysics, point- 
ing out how, beginning with analysis and description, it 
tends to become speculative, and to construct systems of 
metaphysics which aim at complete conceptions of the uni- 
verse and have a certain relevancy to science, morals, and 
religion. Then I will indicate how metaphysics, influenced 
by modern idealistic speculation, became arrogant as a 
theory of knowledge, and how there are present signs of 
its return to its ancient place as a science coordinated with 
the rest of knowledge. In concluding, I will consider how, 
with this return, it finds a new interest in the interpretation 
of the process of evolution. 

Either because Aristotle developed his science of exist- 
ence with so much skill or because the science is to be 
reckoned, as he reckoned it, among those intellectual per- 
formances which are excellent, its unfortunate name has 
never completely obscured its professed aims and restric- 
tions. Too often, indeed, metaphysics has been made the 
refuge of ignorance, and inquirers in other fields have been 
too ready to bestow upon it their own unsolved problems 
and inconsistencies. Many have thus been led to refuse 

9 



discussion of certain difficulties for the reason that they 
are metaphysical, a reason which may indicate that one is 
tired rather than that one is wise. It has even been sug- 
gested that so long as problems are unsolved they are 
metaphysical. Even so, the study, on account of the com- 
prehensiveness thus given to it, might advance itself, im- 
posing and commanding, a guarantor of intellectual mod- 
esty. Yet metaphysicians, as a rule, have not regarded 
their work as that of salvation. They have viewed their 
problems as the result of reflection rather than of emer- 
gency. And their reflection has ever seized upon the fact 
that nature's great and manifold diversities do, none the 
less, in spite of that diversity, consent to exist together in 
some sort of union, and that, consequently, some under- 
standing of that unity is a thing to attempt. Metaphysics, 
therefore, may still adopt the definition and limitations 
set for it by Aristotle. We may, indeed, define it in other 
terms, calling it, for instance, the science of reality, but 
our altered words still point out that metaphysical interest 
is in the world as a world of connected things, a world with 
a general character in addition to those specific characters 
which give it its variety and make many sciences necessary 
for its comprehension. 

The term "reality," however, is intellectually agile. It 
tends to play tricks with one's prejudices and to lead desire 
on a merry chase. For to denominate anything real is 
usually to import a distinction, and to consign, thereby, 
something else to the region of appearance. Could we 
keep the region of appearance from becoming populated, 
it might remain nothing more than the natural negative 
implication of a region of positive interest. But reality, 
once a king, makes many exiles who crave and seek citizen- 
ship in the land from which they have been banished. The 
term "reality," therefore, should inspire caution instead 
of confidence in metaphysics — a lesson which history has 

10 



abundantly illustrated, but which man is slow to learn. 
Contrast those imposing products of human fancy which 
we call materialism and idealism, each relegating the other 
to the region of appearance, and what are they at bottom 
but an exalted prejudice for matter and an exalted preju- 
dice for mind ? And had not their conflict been spectacular, 
as armies with banners, what a pitiable spectacle it would 
have presented, since a child's first thought destroys the 
one, and every smallest grain of sand the other? No; 
everything is somehow real ; and to make distinctions with- 
in that realm demands caution and hesitation. 

Thus it is that the concept of reality has become an im- 
portant theme in a great part of metaphysical inquiry, 
and that a keen appreciation of its varieties is essential to 
the historian of metaphysics. That science has been 
thought to suffer from a too close scrutiny into the idiosyn- 
crasies of its past ; but being somewhat ancient and robust, 
and, withal, decidedly human, it may consult the reflection 
that more youthful sciences have not always walked in 
wisdom's path, and so bear its own exposure with some 
consequent consolation. Yet what it has to reveal in the 
light of the shifting concept of reality is significant indeed. 
For we have come to learn that to call anything real ex- 
clusively, is to imply a preference, and that preference is 
largely a matter of the time in which it is born. It reflects 
an age, an occasion, a society, a moral, intellectual, or 
economic condition. It does not reflect an absolute posi- 
tion which knows no wavering. For me, just now, meta- 
physics is the most real thing imaginable, more real than 
chemistry or the stock exchange. In displaying some en- 
thusiasm for it, I care not if the elements revert to ether 
or how the market goes. To be invited just now to con- 
sider the periodic law or the latest market quotations, 
would irritate me. An altered situation would find me, 
doubtless, possessed of an altered preference, indifferent 

11 



no longer to another science or to the Street. So much 
does occasion determine preference, and preference reality. 

The historical oppositions in metaphysics present them- 
selves, therefore, not as a mass of conflicting and contra- 
dictory opinions about the absolutely real, but as a too 
exclusive championship of what their exponents have be- 
lieved to be most important for their times. In such meta- 
physicians the enthusiasm of the prophet has outrun the 
disinterestedness of the scientist. We may describe them 
as men of restricted vision, but we may not, therefore, con- 
clude that their vision was not acute. Plato was not an 
idle dreamer, assigning to unreality the bed on which you 
sleep in order that he might convince you that the only 
genuinely real bed is the archetype in the mind of God, 
the ideal bed of which all others are shadows. Undoubt- 
edly he converses thus about beds in his "Republic," but 
he does not advise you, as a consequence, to go to sleep in 
heaven. He tells you, rather, that justice is a social matter 
which you can never adequately administer so long as your 
attention is fixed solely on individual concerns. You must 
seek to grasp justice as a principle, in the light of which 
the different parts of the body politic may find their most 
fruitful interplay and coordination. His metaphysics of 
the ideal was born of Athens' need, but his dialogues re- 
main instructive reading for the modern man. We may 
confound him by pointing out the obvious fact that men, 
not principles, make society, and yet accept his teaching 
that men without principles make a bad society, exalting 
principles thus to the position of the eminently real. 

Similarly, he who reads Fichte's "Science of Knowl- 
edge" should not forget that Fichte spoke to the German 
people, calling them a nation. And the response he met 
must have seemed, in his eyes, no small justification of his 
view that reality is essentially a self-imposed moral task. 
And Spencer, influenced by social and economic reorgani- 

12 



zation and consolidation, could force the universe into a 
formula and think that he had said the final word about 
reality. Thus any exclusive conception of reality is ren- 
dered great, not by its finality for all times, but by its his- 
torical appropriateness. 

Such questions, therefore, as, What is real? Is there 
any reality at all? Is not everything illusion, or at least 
part of everything? and such statements as, Only the 
good is real, Only matter is real, Only mind is real, Only 
energy is real, are questions and statements to be asked 
and made only by persons with a mission. For reality 
means either everything whatsoever or that a distinction 
has been made, a distinction which indicates not a differ- 
ence in the fact of existence, but a difference in point of 
view, in value, in preference, in relative importance for 
some desire or choice. Yet it is doubtless the business of 
metaphysics to undertake an examination and definition 
of the different points of view from which those questions 
can be asked and those statements made. Indeed, that 
undertaking may well be regarded as one of the most im- 
portant in metaphysics. The outcome of it is not a super- 
ficial doctrine of the relativity of the real, with the accom- 
panying advice that each of us select his own reality and 
act accordingly. Nor is it the doctrine that since nothing 
or everything is absolutely real, there is no solid basis for 
conduct and no abiding hope for man. That individualism 
which is willful and that kind of agnosticism which is not 
intellectual reserve, but which is intellectual complacency, 
have no warrant in metaphysics. On the contrary, the 
doctrine of metaphysics is much more obvious and much 
more sane. It is that existence, taken comprehensively, 
is an affair of distinctions; that existence is shot through 
and through with variety. 

But this is not all. Metaphysics discovers in the fact of 
variety a reason for the world's onward movement. For 

13 



a world without variety would be a world eternally still, 
unchanged and unchanging through all the stretches of 
time. We might endow such a world with unlimited power, 
capable, if once aroused, of a marvelous reaction; but un- 
less there existed somewhere within it a difference, no 
tremor of excitement would ever disturb its endless slum- 
ber. All the sciences teach this doctrine. Even logic and 
mathematics, the most static of them all, require variables, 
if their formulations are to have any significance or appli- 
cation. Knowledge thus reflects the basal structure of 
things. And in this fact that differences are fundamental 
in the constitution of our world, we discover the reason why 
all those systems of metaphysics eventually fail which at- 
tempt to reduce all existence to a single type of reality 
devoid of variety in its internal make-up. 

The variety in our world involves a further doctrine. 
While all varieties as such are equally real, they are not 
all equally effective. They make different sorts of differ- 
ences, and introduce, thereby, intensive and qualitative 
distinctions. The onward movement of the world is thus, 
not simply successive change, but a genuine development 
or evolution. It creates a past the contents of which must 
forever remain what they were, but it proposes a future 
where variety may still exercise its difference-making func- 
tion. And that is why we human beings, acting our part 
in some cosmic comedy or tragedy, may not be indifferent 
to our performance or to the preferences we exalt. The 
future makes us all reformers, inviting us to meddle with 
the world, to use it and change it for our ends. The invi- 
tation is genuine and made in good faith, for all man's 
folly is not yet sufficient to prove it insincere. That is why 
it has been easy to believe that God once said to man: "Be 
fruitful and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue 
it ; and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the 
fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth 

14 



upon the earth." That is why, also, willful individualism 
and complacent agnosticism have no warrant in meta- 
physics. Since all things are equally real, but all not 
equally important, the world's evolution presents itself as 
a drift towards results, as something purposeful and in- 
tended. While we may not invoke design to explain this 
relative importance of things, the world's trend puts us 
under the natural obligation of discovering how it may be 
controlled, and enforces the obligation with obvious penal- 
ties. Thus willfulness receives natural punishment and 
the universe never accepts ignorance as an excuse. 

It seems difficult, therefore, not to describe evolution as 
a moral process. By that I do not mean that nature is 
especially careful about the kinds of things she does or 
that she is true and just in all her dealings. But evolution 
is movement controlled by the relative importance of 
things. We consequently find such terms as "struggle," 
"survival," "adaptation," useful in the description of it. 
And although these terms may appear more appropriate 
to the development of living things than to that of inor- 
ganic nature, we may not overlook the fact that the physi- 
cal world also begets varieties and has its character deter- 
mined by their relative importance. 

Thus it is that the metaphysical doctrine of final causes 
appears to be fundamentally sound. It is easy to render 
it ridiculous by supposing that things were once made on 
purpose to exhibit the features and manners of action 
which we now discover in them, or by conceiving adapta- 
tion as an efficient cause of events, as if the fact that we 
see were the reason why we have eyes. So conceived the 
doctrine of final causes is justly condemned. On the other 
hand, however, how superficial is the opinion that in nature 
there is entire indifference to results, and that there are no 
natural goods ! To-day is not simply yesterday rearranged 
or twenty-four hours added to a capricious time; it is 

15 



yesterday reorganized, with yesterday's results carried 
on and intensified. So that we might say that nature, 
having accidentally discovered that the distinction be- 
tween light and darkness is a natural good, stuck to 
the business of making eyes. We should thus express 
a natural truth, but should not thereby free ourselves 
from the obligation of discovering how nature had 
achieved so noteworthy a result. That obligation the 
doctrine of final causes most evidently does not discharge, 
because final causes have never been found adequate to 
reveal the method of nature's working. Again and again, 
some investigator, impressed by the undoubted fact of na- 
ture's continuity, by her carefulness of the type, by her 
preservation of forms, by that character of hers which we 
can properly describe only by calling it preferential or 
moral, impressed by these things he has attempted to turn 
them into efficient causes, factors operative in the mecha- 
nism of the world. And he has repeatedly failed. It is, 
consequently, not prejudice which leads many students of 
nature's processes to insist that these are ultimately what 
we call mechanical. It is metaphysical insight. Yet that 
insight may readily degenerate into the most superficial 
philosophy, if it leads us to forget that mechanism is the 
means by which the ends of nature are reached. For 
nature undoubtedly exists for what she accomplishes, and 
it is that fact which gives to mechanism its relevancy, its 
importance, and its high value. Thus metaphysics, true 
to its early formulations, finds the world to be both me- 
chanical and teleological, both a quantitative relation of 
parts and a qualitative realization of goods. Some indica- 
tion that this finding is correct may be discovered in our 
instinctive recognition that nature is appropriately de- 
scribed both in the formulations of science and in the 
expressions of poetry. 

Metaphysical analysis tends thus to disclose existence as 

16 



a process motived by the variety of its factors, as an evolu- 
tion characterized, not by indifference, but by selection 
based on the relative importance of its factors for the main- 
tenance of natural goods, as a development executed 
through an elaborate mechanism. It is natural that meta- 
physics should become speculative and attempt the con- 
struction of a system of things wherein its obvious disclo- 
sures may be envisaged with coherence and simplicity, and 
thus be rationally comprehended and explained. It is in 
such attempts that metaphysics has historically scored its 
greatest successes and its greatest failures. The lesson to 
be derived from a survey of them is, doubtless, one of grave 
caution, but it would be idle to affirm that we have seen 
the last of great systems of metaphysics. Democritus, 
Plato, Aristotle, Bruno, Descartes, Hobbes, Spinoza, 
Newton, Leibnitz, Berkeley, Kant, Laplace, Hegel, Spen- 
cer—to mention only the greatest names— each has had 
his system of the world which still has power to affect the 
thought and lives of men. System is beloved of man's 
imagination and his mind is restless in the presence of un- 
connected and unsupported details. He will see things 
sub specie ceternitatis even while time counts out his sands 
of life. It is a habit begotten of nature, to be neither justi- 
fied nor condemned. It would be absurd, consequently, 
to regard any system of metaphysics as absolutely true, 
but it would be more absurd to refuse to make one on that 
account. For such systems constitute the supreme at- 
tempts of intelligence at integration. They propose to 
tell us what our world would be like if our present restricted 
knowledge were adequate for its complete exposition. 
They are not, therefore, to be abandoned because they are 
always inadequate, incomplete, and provisional; they are 
rather to be pursued, because, when constructed by the 
wise, they are always ennobling and minister faithfully to 
the freedom of the mind. 

17 



Protests against metaphysical systems are, consequently, 
apt to be proofs of an impatient temper rather than of 
sound judgment. Yet such systems often grow arrogant, 
and become, thereby, objects of justified suspicion. Being 
the crowning enterprise of intelligence, to be worn, one 
might say, as an indication of a certain nobility of mind, 
they forfeit the claim to be thus highly regarded if they 
are made the essential preliminaries of wisdom. Yet the 
too eager and the too stupid have often claimed that the 
only possible foundation for the truth and value of science, 
and the only possible warrant for morality and human 
aspiration, are to be found in a system of metaphysics. If 
such a claim meant only that with a perfect system, could 
we attain it, would riddles all be solved and life's darkness 
made supremely clear, it would express an obvious truth. 
But made with the intent of laying metaphysics down as 
the foundation of science, of morality, and of religion, it 
is obviously false and iniquitous. In our enthusiasm we 
may indeed speak of metaphysics as the queen of all the 
sciences, but she can wear the title only if her behavior is 
queenly; she forfeits it when, ceasing to reign, she stoops 
to rule. 

Yet there is justice in the notion that metaphysics, es- 
pecially in its systematic shape, should contribute to the 
value of science, and be a source of moral and religious 
enlightenment. Its greatest ally is logic. In the system- 
atic attempt to reduce to order the business of getting and 
evaluating knowledge, in distinguishing fruitful from 
fruitless methods, and, above all, in attempting to disclose 
the sort of conquest knowledge makes over the world, the 
aims and achievements of science should become better ap- 
preciated and understood. It is still true, as Heraclitus of 
old remarked, that much information does not make a man 
wise, but wisdom is intelligent understanding. 

The disclosures of metaphysics are equally significant 

18 



for ethics. The great systems have usually eventuated in 
a theory of morals. And this is natural. Metaphysics, 
disclosing the fact that behavior is a primary feature of 
things, raises inevitably the question of how to behave ef- 
fectively and well. Emphasizing the relative importance 
of the factors of evolution, it encourages the repeated val- 
uation of human goods. It can make no man moral, nor 
give him a rule to guide him infallibly in his choices and 
acts ; but it can impress upon him the fact that he is under 
a supreme obligation, that of living a life controlled, not 
by passion, but by reason, and of making his knowledge 
contribute to the well-being of society. It will still preach 
its ancient moral lesson, that since with intelligence has 
arisen some comprehension of the world, the world is best 
improved, not by passions or by parties, not by govern- 
ments or by sects, but by the persistent operation of intel- 
ligence itself. 

After a somewhat similar manner, metaphysics in its 
systematic character has significance for theology. To 
speak of existence as a riddle is natural, because so much 
of its import can be only guessed. That it has import, 
most men suspect, and that this import is due to superior 
beings or powers is the conviction of those who are re- 
ligious. Metaphysics is seldom indifferent to such sus- 
picions and convictions. As it has a lively sense of the 
unity of things, it is led to seek ultimate reasons for the 
world's stability. And as it deals with such conceptions as 
"the infinite" and "the absolute," it has a certain linguistic 
sympathy with faith. Consequently, while it has never 
made a religion, it has been used as an apology for many. 
This fact witnesses, no doubt, more profoundly to the 
adaptability of metaphysics than it does to the finality of 
the ideas it has been used to sustain. Yet metaphysics, 
tending to keep men ever close to the sources of life, fosters 
a whole-hearted acceptance of life's responsibilities and 

19 



duties. It is thus the friend of natural piety. And in 
superimposing upon piety systematic reflection on what 
we call the divine, it follows a natural instinct, and seeks 
to round out man's conception of the universe as the source 
of his being, the place of his sojourning, the begettor of 
his impulses and his hopes, and the final treasury of what 
he has been and accomplished. 

Such, then, are the general nature and scope of meta- 
physical inquiry. With Aristotle we may define meta- 
physics as the science of existence and distinguish it from 
other departments of knowledge by its generality and its 
lack of attention to those specific features of existence 
which make many sciences an intellectual necessity. Ex- 
istence, considered generally, presents itself as an affair 
of connected varieties and, consequently, as an onward 
movement. Because the varieties have not all the same 
efficacy, the movement presents those selective and moral 
characters which we ascribe to a development or evolution. 
While the efficient causes of this evolution appear to be 
mechanical, the mechanism results in the production of 
natural goods, and thus justifies a doctrine of final causes. 
Upon such considerations metaphysics may superimpose 
speculative reflection, and attempt to attain a unified sys- 
tem of the world. It may also attempt to evaluate science 
in terms of logical theory, to enlarge morality through a 
theory of ethics, and to interpret natural piety and religion 
in terms of theological conceptions. Metaphysics proposes 
thus both an analysis and a theory of existence; it is de- 
scriptive and it is systematic. If metaphysicians often 
forget that theory is not analysis, that system is not descrip- 
tion, it is not because they are metaphysicians, but because 
they are human. For my part, therefore, I do not see why 
they should not be allowed to entertain at least as many 
absurdities as the average reflective inquirer. Greater in- 
dulgence is neither desired nor necessary. And while meta- 

20 



physicians may be hard to understand, they do not like to 
be misunderstood. So I emphasize again the fact that it 
appears to be the greatest abuse of metaphysical theories 
to use them to justify natural excellence or to condone 
natural folly. It is their business to help to clarify exist- 
ence. It is not their business to constitute an apology for 
our prejudices or for our desires. 

In regarding metaphysics as the outcome of reflection 
on existence in general, and, consequently, as a depart- 
ment of natural knowledge, I have supposed that intelli- 
gent persons could undertake such reflection and accom- 
plish something of interest and consequence, by following 
the ordinary experimental methods of observation and 
tested generalization. I have stated that the contrast be- 
tween metaphysics and other departments of knowledge 
arises from its emphasis on generalities and their emphasis 
on particulars. In doing all this I have followed ancient 
tradition. But much of modern philosophy has emphati- 
cally declared that such an attitude is decidedly too naive. 
Keenly alive to the fact, which it credits itself with dis- 
covering, the fact, namely, that the world into which we 
inquire exists for us only as the mind's object, that philos- 
ophy has insisted that the mind is central in the universe, 
and that the nature and laws of mind are, therefore, the 
determining factors in the structure of the world we 
know. 

Of this view Kant was the great systematic expounder. 
It was he who taught that space and time are but the forms 
of sense perception. It was he who declared that the basal 
principles of physics are but derivatives of the principles 
of the mind. It was he who affirmed that by virtue of our 
understanding we do not discover the laws of nature, but 
impose them. He consequently drew the conclusion that 
we know only the appearances of things connected accord- 
ing to the laws of the mind, but never the things them- 

21 



selves connected according to their own laws. The moral 
he drew pointed in the direction of intellectual modesty 
and an enlightened reliance on experience. But to make 
nature nothing but a collection of appearances in the mind, 
united according to the supposed necessities of thought, is 
really to discourage experience and bid imagination riot. 
For in the critical philosophy of Kant we have suggested 
a science which is higher than the sciences, a set of prin- 
ciples upon which they depend, and from which might pos- 
sibly be deduced by the mere operation of thought all 
that is essential to their content. We have also suggested 
a method of inquiry which is no longer based on experi- 
mental observation and generalization, but which is con- 
trolled by principles supposed to be purely a priori, and 
thus more fundamental than experience itself. Metaphys- 
ics, by entering that supposed region of purer insight, cut 
itself off from all helpful competition and coordination 
with the rest of knowledge. It begot those great systems 
of idealistic philosophy which Professor S ant ay ana has 
characterized as "visionary insolence." It produced that 
lamentable conflict between science and metaphysics which 
was so characteristic of the last century. No department 
of knowledge can thrive in isolation. If metaphysics, by 
arrogating to itself supremacy, tended to become vision- 
ary, the sciences also, despising metaphysical insight, 
tended to become disorganized and illiberal. 

Happily in our own day there are many signs that this 
unfortunate antithesis between science and metaphysics is 
disappearing. Metaphysics itself, by a sort of inner evolu- 
tion, has been working out to a more objective view of 
things. On the other hand, the sciences, through their 
own extension, have come upon unsuspected generalities 
and coordinations. Above all, the principle of evolution, 
which was early recognized in metaphysical theories, has 
served, by its general recognition in all departments of 

22 



knowledge, to restore unity among the sciences. It has 
forced idealism to recognize that even intelligence, the 
mind itself, has had a natural history. Metaphysics is thus 
leaving its position of isolation, and returning to its an- 
cient place as a science coordinated with the rest of 
knowledge. 

But it returns not without modification and not without 
its own interest in evolutionary theory. It will still, as of 
old, seek to discover the basal types of existence and their 
general modes of operation. It will still ask, What can 
we say of existence as a whole which is true of it? But it 
has learned from idealism that while it may view intelli- 
gence as the instrument of knowledge, it may not hope to 
understand nature as a process if the place of intelligence 
in that process is disregarded. For to reconstruct in 
thought the world's vanished past and to forecast its pos- 
sible future is to give to intelligence a certain baffling and 
perplexing importance in the scheme of things. In attack- 
ing this problem of the place of intelligence in an evolving 
world, metaphysics may not, however, boast that it has a 
method peculiarly its own. It may not hope to control the 
inquiry by principles supposed to be derived from pure 
reason and thus to have a higher warrant than the prin- 
ciples employed in other sciences. For metaphysics has 
come to believe in the evolution of intelligence because it 
has been so taught by the method of experimental in- 
vestigation. It can not, therefore, discredit that method 
without discrediting its own belief. 

We may, indeed, be at first bewildered by the fact that 
the world in which intelligence has evolved is the world 
which intelligence has discovered ; but if we accept the dis- 
covery, we do but recognize in intelligence a natural good 
whose use and final cause is to make us somewhat ac- 
quainted with our dwelling-place. The world thus exists 
as just what we have discovered it to be, the place in which 

23 



intelligence has dawned and led to a knowledge of the 
process in which such a great event has happened. It is 
natural, therefore, to claim that in reflecting on our world 
we may largely disregard the fact that we reflect. Real- 
izing that in him has arisen intelligence, knowledge, under- 
standing of the world, as the stoutest weapon in his life's 
warfare, man realizes that his weapon is for use rather than 
for scrutiny. Its excellence is to be tested by the territory 
won, and not by inquisitive feeling of the sharpness of the 
blade— especially when that blade sharpens only with its 
conquering use. Thus, as I say, we may largely disregard 
the fact that we reflect. By so doing, the world grows to 
clearness as the thing reflected on. Its laws and processes 
take shape in useful formulas. It is thus that the sciences 
advance to their great contributions. And why not, then, 
metaphysics ? Why should we rather hope that by making 
the mind itself exclusively the object of our study, an 
added clearness will be given to the scheme of things? 

But we can never wholly disregard the fact that we re- 
flect, because the dawn of intelligence in the world is an 
event of too great interest to be accepted merely as a matter 
of record. If we are warranted in regarding it as a natural 
good whose use is to acquaint us with the world, we are, 
doubtless, also warranted in regarding it as the situation 
in which the world's evolution is most clearly and effec- 
tively revealed. If, now, we interpret this situation as 
differing from all others only by the fact that in it we have 
immediate knowledge of what it is to be an evolution, we 
attain a suggestive basis for generalization. From it we 
find little warrant to conclude that the present is simply 
the unfolding of a past, possibly of a very remote past, or 
that the future is simply the present unfolded. Evolution 
appears to be a process of a totally different sort. It ap- 
pears to be always and eternally the unfolding of an ef- 
fective present. Behind it, it leaves the past as the record 

24 



of what it has done, the totality of things accomplished, 
but not the promise and potency of things to be. It is a 
dead past. As such it may be conditioning; but it is not 
effective, because, it is accomplished. To the present alone 
belong the riches of potentiality and spontaneity; to it 
alone belongs efficiency. We are, thus, under no obliga- 
tion to seek in endless regress through the past the source 
of the world's becoming or the secret of its variety and 
human interest. 

If such an interpretation of evolution is warranted, that 
process may indeed be described as having purpose. Only 
we may not understand by purpose some anciently con- 
ceived plan which the world was intended to follow. We 
should not invoke foresight, but should recognize historical 
continuity. For when we have a process going on in such 
a manner that the present of it is continually transforming 
itself into the record of what it has done, writing, as it 
were, a cosmic history, then, surely, we have a purpose. 
Such a process can be comprehended only as one having 
meaning and significance. Its factors are bound together 
not only as cause and effect, but also as means and end. 
Shed intelligence upon any of its events, and the question, 
Why? will leap into being with its insistent demands. 
The question sends us searching through the records of the 
past and the promise of the future in order that the event 
may be estimated at its proper value. Only by such search- 
ing may we hope to discover what the world's purpose is. 
We may call it, in one word, achievement. And I must 
believe, just because achievement is wrought through an 
effective present, that the world, as it passes from moment 
to moment of its existence, carries ever with it perennial 
sources of outlook and novelty. And I must believe, too, 
that just in proportion as we free ourselves from the des- 
perate notion that somewhere and somehow hope and out- 
look have been, once for all, fixed unalterably for the 

25 



world's future, we shall then find in our union with nature 
a source of genuine enthusiasm. 

Yes, we can not wholly disregard the fact that we reflect. 
We must note that the knowledge of the evolution of intel- 
ligence is itself a product of intelligence. Thus taking note, 
we may discover in the evolution of intelligence, not only 
the world grown to the highest point of varied and efficient 
action that we know, but evolution itself disclosed for what 
it is in its essential nature. It is the ceaseless unfolding of 
an effective present which carries with it the sources of 
what it achieves, and whose achievements have the value 
they disclose as discovered factors in the universal history 
of the world. 



26 



APR £7 1908 



COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS 



A SERIES of twenty-two lectures descriptive in untechnical language of 
the achievements in Science, Philosophy and Art, and indicating the 
present status of these subjects as concepts of human knowledge, are being 
delivered at Columbia University, during the academic year 1907-1908, by 
various professors chosen to represent the several departments of instruction. 

MATHEMATICS, by Cassius Jackson Keyser, Adrain Professor of Mathe- 
matics. 

PHYSICS, by Ernest Fox Nichols, Professor of Experimental Physics. 

CHEMISTRY, by Charles F. Chandler, Professor of Chemistry. 

ASTRONOMY, by Harold Jacoby, Rutherfurd Professor of Astronomy. 

GEOLOGY, by James Furman Kemp, Professor of Geology. 

BIOLOGY, by Edmund B. Wilson, Professor of Zoology. 

PHYSIOLOGY, by Frederic S. Lee, Professor of Physiology. 

BOTANY, by Herbert Maule Richards, Professor of Botany. 

ZOOLOGY, by Henry E. Crampton, Professor of Zoology. 

ANTHROPOLOGY, by Franz Boas, Professor of Anthropology. 

ARCHAEOLOGY, by James Rignall Wheeler, Professor of Greek Archae- 
ology and Art. 

HISTORY, by James Harvey Robinson, Professor of History. 

ECONOMICS, by Henry Rogers Seager, Professor of Political Economy. 

POLITICS, by Charles A. Beard, Adjunct Professor of Politics. 

JURISPRUDENCE, by Munroe Smith, Professor of Roman Law and 
Comparative Jurisprudence. 

SOCIOLOGY, by Franklin Henry Giddings, Professor of Sociology. 

PHILOSOPHY, by Nicholas Murray Butler, President of the University. 

PSYCHOLOGY, by Robert S. Wood worth, Adjunct Professor of Psy- 
chology. 

METAPHYSICS, by Frederick J. E. Woodbridge, Johnsonian Professor of 
Philosophy. 

ETHICS, by John Dewey, Professor of Philosophy. 

PHILOLOGY, by A. V. W. Jackson, Professor of Indo-Iranian Lan- 
guages. 

LITERATURE, by Harry Thurston Peck, Anthon Professor of the Latin 
Language and Literature. 

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